Identify a useful RDF vocabulary to import (any suggestions?) that is slightly more standard

Attempt to wrestle with TEI or TEI-Lite, unclear if there is an importable RDF vocab

Merge all names into a single field, but perhaps append an identifier such as (A), ®, and (N) to each name (thus creating potentially triplicate names in the system, but being identifiable as author, recipient, or name mention)

Any thoughts, advice, use cases/scenarios, etc.? Appreciate it!

BEN BAKELAAR, MLIS
Thomas A. Edison Papers
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

A custom vocabulary does not forgo inter-system compatibility if it is a) written to extend existing vocabularies and b) published with documentation. Just define your particular domain using references to existing classes and properties using e.g. rdfs:domain, rdfs:range, and owl:sameAs.

There is nothing wrong with repurposing fields if the fields are abstractly defined. Omeka S lets you give alternate labels and comments to properties for this exact purpose!

Thanks Jim, this reply is very helpful, as well as the Linked Open Vocabularies site!

We’ve crossed out #1, #4, and #5 as a result.

As a curiosity, do you have any idea why Dublin Core doesn’t contain an “Author” field, and BIBO only contains “List of Authors”, but not an individual author? Meanwhile, BIBO contains “Recipients” which is useful to us in regards to historical documents, and we understand why Dublin Core doesn’t have this.

DC and BIBO differ in their domains: the former defines any resource and the later defines bibliographic resources. DC doesn’t contain an author field because, in their judgement, dcterms:creatorapplies generally across domains. Because of this BIBO instructs its users to use dcterms:creator to describe authors, but you are free to use any property that makes the most sense in your domain.

And Jim while this is fresh, do you have any comments on the gap between RDF (I think primarily a “web” spec) vs. institutional ILS/library systems which typically seem to use XML specs like METS/MODS? Is that what the plugin “connectors” are for? And if so, are there plans for 2-way communication? Because right now it seems like it’s just 1 way “digest” from an ILS into Omeka.

METS/MODS are legacy standards for encoding library objects and bibliographic records, respectively, using XML. RDF is a general purpose data modeling specification. Older XML specs use a hierarchical model to represent relationships between resources and their properties, while the newer RDF specs use a graph model. So, they are tangentially related, but it’s not helpful to compare the two, especially in relation to Omeka S connectors.

We have no plans to implement true syncing between Omeka and institutional repository systems.